


The Family Man

by LittleSpider



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Family Man Merlin, Hetero Merlin, Merlin is a Little Shit, Not Canon Compliant, Original Female Character - Freeform, Straight Merlin, This started life as a verse, Unplanned Pregnancy, elope, kingsman - Freeform, kingsman the secret service, maternal death, merlin is a softy, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 13:49:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSpider/pseuds/LittleSpider
Summary: To the men and women of Kingsman, Merlin is a stoic, omniscient, omnipresent tower of strength.But one woman knew him very differently.





	The Family Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harryunwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryunwin/gifts).



> To HarryUnwin, who loved Chloe a little more than Merlin did, I think!

Merlin first laid eyes on the woman who would be his wife when he backed Amelia's proposal for the position of ' _Morgana_ '.

The first of it's kind, it was as a position to support Merlin in the role of ' _Wizard_ ' to the ' _Court_ ' and the successful candidate was to act as a first line of online espionage via social networking and secondly, to spread disinformation from secondary accounts when an incident required addressing in the public eye.

Arthur had fought against it tooth and nail, seeing no need for someone specific to monitor _Twitter, Facebook_ , and the like to be added to his already extensive lists of potential threats. Besides, he had whole departments looking into this. Why would he want to pay someone to sit on _Instagram_ looking for terrorists posing with bombs or bio-geneticists on _Snapchat_ with their latest foray into animal/human breeding.

Amelia must have said the right thing because a few weeks later, they had the final candidate.

Merlin had anticipated someone from within the ranks of an intelligence agency that had outstanding expertise in hacking, in infiltration, in social engineering.

What he was faced with was not that person.

Chloe was a Aston University undergraduate who had been expelled for hacking the _GCHQ_ to prove a point to a fellow student. Instead of prosecuting her to the full extent of the law, her name had been slipped to Amelia from a contact within the agency.

She was short, overweight, had long, unkempt dyed black hair in a plait, and heavy black glasses that seemed paper thin when compared to her thick Birmingham accent.

Merlin was not impressed at all.

Not only had they taken on someone who was effectively a _grey hat hacker_ who looked like they didn't own a hairbrush, they were likely to piss Arthur and him off simultaneously.

After meeting her face to face, he was not much more impressed.

Her lapse way of speaking, bitten fingernails, and the way she kept glancing at his bald head every few moments made him intensely uncomfortable and he tried to ask Amelia if there were no 'better suited' candidates.

Amelia's terse jerk of the head as she asked him if it was her gender, working class status, or the fact she'd dropped out of Aston that made him ask that.

He was handed her file, and she was shown to her new living quarters.

Merlin studied her file and though he didn't care to change any of his own personal observations about her, he had to admit her skills were something spectacular.

She had attended a state secondary school, come from a single parent family and had attended university on a full scholarship before her brush with the law in her third and final year.

The girl was barely 21 to his 43. He could teach her. Mould her. Make her into the sort of person Kingsman required its agents to be.

He agreed with Amelia to take her under his wing so to speak.

It was not as easy as it sounded.

Once she had found her feet. She was beyond irritating.

She squeaked her chair, despite how much Merlin sprayed it with WD40 when she was absent. She refused to use a coaster for her _Princess Leia_ mug leaving abhorrent brown rings all over her desk. Sweet wrappers littered around her mouse mat and getting caught in the wheels of her chair.

She hummed half tunes which got stuck in Merlin's head most of the day and would giggle in an irritating way whenever James dropped by and playfully attempted seducing her with the most trite horseshite that he'd ever heard.

But then James had to go and teach her how to irritate him on purpose.

Though Merlin would say he had it coming given the abrupt way he spoke to her and tutted in a passive aggressive manner.

Littering her monitor with well written and beautifully scripted notes that asked her to ' _take your cup to the kitchen once you've finished with it please – M_ ' or ' _Can you please shut your door if you insist on riding your chair like an arthritic donkey – M_ '.'

Merlin came back to his desk to find his cup superglued to it. His desk drawers locked with a bike lock and the time that took the biscuit, when she had planted watercress in his keyboard.

He thought he was going insane when he kept finding pieces of shorn cress around his keys.

Things continued this way for 9 years and without realising, they grew around each other.

He'd close her door out of habit when she leaned forwards on the computer knowing that when he heard the creaking she was absorbed in her work. And she'd wash not only her own mug but his too when taking her cup to the sink.

She'd share her sweets with him for correctly guessing the songs she was humming and they found a small, if slightly unusual truce between them.

It was in the Summer of their ninth year as colleagues that Merlin realised something...

An unseasonably warm summers day saw a training exercise in the city go poorly.

Morgana was overseeing her group on a rare field excursion she had asked to take part in.

A civilian, under the influence of drugs and feeling particularly suspicious pulled an illegal firearm and shot her in the stomach thinking her to be a _spy_.

Rushed back to HQ, they operated to remove the bullet and repair the damage all whilst an aghast Merlin stood by as Harry tried to comfort him, bemused over why the 'thorn in his side' was causing him such heartache.

Merlin realised that he'd become accustomed to her in a way that pleased his heart.

Sat at her bedside in the critical care suite, he took her hand in his and looking at the bitten skin around her thumbs, and stubby fingers that glided over keys with ease and realised with a sick feeling that he felt something stronger and kinder than his disdain for her.

He felt _affection_.

Merlin had been seduced by her without realising it.

As she recovered from infection and abdominal trauma, he took her to _RAF Cosford_ in a helicopter under the guise of collecting important blueprints from an ex-army friend and wheeled her around the various hangars pointing out his favourite pieces along with information and as she fell asleep in the cold war exhibit he purchased a teddy bear for her, claiming that it was given to him as a gift from the woman in the gift shop.

He finally admitted his feelings to her a day later when she asked him about it and admitted she was only ever irritating and unkind to him because she liked him and couldn't let her feelings get in the way of her work.

She'd been trying to put distance between them.

He agreed to allow things to develop between them, telling her in his native Gaelic that his heart was a stone, but better for her to live in as he would protect her its hardness.

Merlin maintained it sounded far more romantic in Gaelic.

A love affair developed between the two. Harry joking that he thought that Merlin's painfully obvious Asexuality had metamorphosed to Demisexuality with the girl-next-door and Merlin enjoying a peaceful, relaxing friendship with his colleague that was mostly reading together, watching films together and generally dealing with the fallout at work.

Neither of them could believe what they had been missing all of these years and what they could have had, but cherished it dearly now.

Months later, Chloe moved into Merlin's quarters, keeping their relationship a closely guarded secret from everyone but Harry and of course, his recruit, turned Kingsman Agent, Eggsy.

As Bors retired through ill health, a new batch of recruits were drafted in and on a training exercise in which Merlin was covering Harry's duties for the evening, Chloe suddenly fell ill and collapsed.

Upon being checked in the medical wing, she discovered she was 8 weeks pregnant.

Neither of them had discussed children and the idea of raising a family was not an ideal situation for either of them so when she confessed to him in the quiet ultrasound suite, she tried to sound as apologetic as possible and agreed to leave her position to raise the child elsewhere.

Merlin proposed immediately.

Refusing him initially, Chloe rebuked him for making an honest woman of her out of duty.

He proposed a second time, holding her stomach that was now housing their growing child and swearing on it that he asked her to be his wife out of love.

They married a week later in Gretna Green, a traditional Scottish wedding venue for eloping couples on New Years Eve as the pipers played.

Merlin held his new, pregnant wife in his arms in their honeymoon bed and sung Auld Langs Ayne to her, promising her a future that he never dreamed he had coming.

They returned back to HQ to continue work as normal until Chloe could no longer blame her weight and love for Pizza for her expanding waistline.

Merlin would give her his wedding ring every morning, and every night would have it back.

Merlin at work. Alasdair at home.

A family man.

Feeling her growing stomach swell with a new life, Merlin would indulge himself in everything he could never be at work.

Two days before Merlin's birthday, she went into labour.

Her waters broke in the middle of the night and Merlin drove her to Whitechapel's medical facility in London.

For almost two days Chloe was in slow labour with their child. Cursing him when the contractions hit, and laughing through the panting with stories of sealing his computer mouse in jelly or wiping peanut butter under the door handles in his office.

Finally, at 1am with a final, exhausted push, Chloe brought their daughter into the world.

For a moment Merlin had it all.

_Just for a moment._

Chloe collapsed a heartbeat later, haemorrhaging heavily after a prolonged childbirth

She died a few moments later, the drugs being pushed through her veins and the pressure on her abdomen to no avail.

Merlin held his wife in his arms, sobbing into her long, black hair. A father, and widower all in one night.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If this impresses enough people. I am happy to dedicate more to them both as I have STORIES for days.


End file.
